Colorado School of Mines building $21 million football stadium

When Shawn Kobylinski visited the Colorado School of Mines during his senior year of high school, he admits there were a couple of things that would take some getting used to. One was the idea of playing football for a school whose nickname was the Orediggers.

The second was where the team played.

"You know how good a school it is, so you try to put it aside. But at first take, it's like, 'Is this really a college athletic facility?' " said Kobylinski, a sophomore from Tucson. "When you go to college, you want a nice complex. You don't want the high school stuff all over again."

In fact, plans were already underway to do something about that. And when Mines recently announced its school-record fundraising total of $35.4 million for the 2013 fiscal year, it gave a special nod to Steve and Dollie Chesebro and Robert E. III and Anne McKee, who each donated $1 million toward the Clear Creek Athletic Complex.

Besides a new football stadium that will be built on the site of the current 90-year-old structure, the facility will add bigger locker rooms and training facilities for the athletic teams along with new coaches' offices and event space for campuswide use.

"The locker rooms we have now, they were built for an era when centers weighed 200 pounds — now there just isn't enough room," said Dan Fox, Mines' dean of students and vice president of student life.

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When Fox came to Mines eight years ago, his initial impressions of the athletic facilities weren't very different from Kobylinski's. At the time, he said, you couldn't grow grass on the football field, and the track that surrounded it was filled with cinder.

Like Colorado State University and the University of Colorado, which hope to build and renovate their football palaces at a cost of about $250 million and $170 million, respectively, in part by making the argument that it's necessary to keep up with their peers and achieve athletic success, Mines also wouldn't mind having a stadium on a par with the Joneses.

However, with a seating capacity of about 5,000 and a cost of somewhere around $21 million, the Division II school's neighborhood isn't nearly as pricey.

But Fox said the complex is important to the school. And like those bigger institutions, there's an acknowledgment that athletics can have a sizable impact. In recent years, Mines has made a concerted effort to get its student population more engaged with the school and campus life. There are new dormitories, for example, in which students with interests in the performing arts or adventure sports — or even social justice — live on the same floor, the better to help foster a sense of community and shared experience.

In some ways, Fox said, the athletic complex helps accomplish the same thing.

"If students want to go skiing every weekend or go to Denver to hang out, that's fine. But if they're leaving because there's nothing to do here, that isn't fine," he said. "We want our students to be actively engaged beyond their studies. And if you look at it, we have 18 varsity sports with 500 athletes participating in them, and the complex is one of their areas of interest, just like the labs are for some of the other students."

Now the only drawback for Kobylinski and his teammates is that it will take two years for the stadium to be ready. That means during the 2014 season, as construction takes place, Mines will have to play its home games at a nearby recreation area.

But in the end, it will be worth it.

"Next season will be an adjustment, but (2015) will be a lot of fun," he said. "It's like after all the hard work that you put in, in my senior year you'll finally be rewarded for it. There'll be bigger crowds watching us play, and we'll have this great place to hang out together."

The new stadium, shown above, will have a capacity of about 5,000 and will be built on the site of the current 90-year-old structure. It will have bigger locker rooms and training facilities along with new coaches' offices and event space for campuswide use. It is expected to open in 2015.

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